During my day at CPAC, I wandered through the wingnut trade show, stopping for some time at the booth sponsored by the American Legislative Exchange Council, the secretive corporate-fattened legislation mil that's been spreading joy and bad law all over America for the past few years. I did this because, by far, ALEC is the most insidious delivery mechanism for wingnuttia that we have, and it's a damned successful one, as well. Of course, the material in the booth was all about goodhearted citizens from all over the country coming together in the cause of liberty's sparkle-ponies. However, out in the country, ALEC's shenanigans are (finally) drawing some pushback.

First, Minnesota governor Mark Dayton has decided that he will pretty much veto any legislation per se simply because of ALEC's involvement. The bills, he says, are so obviously written from a general template that they're easy to spot....

The first-term DFL Governor held up a pamphlet and said "Three of the four bills come right from this manual "tort reform bootcamp" , published by the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC. This is the same group who reportedly provided legislators last week with all expense paid trips to posh Florida hotel for what they call an education policy conference. "It is an extremely conservative group funded largely by large corporations, big business associations, insurance companies and very wealthy individuals.

"I've found that Minnesotans do not want their laws written by the lobbyists of big corporations.

"Since these Republican bills so closely follow ALEC's instructions on tort reform and since ALEC's opinion on these subjects are evidently more important to Republican legislators than mine , their fellow DFL legislators or the Minnesota Supreme Court's, perhaps they would share with us all of the other ALEC boot camp manuals so we can know in advance what to expect from them for the rest of the session.

And, over in Wisconsin, which has become rather the Bonneville Salt Flats of ALEC test tracks, some professors at the University of Wisconsin are calling out the organization for its obvious meddling in that state's public education.

"It's interesting to me that (ALEC) has managed to stay below the radar and secretive for many, many years," Underwood said in a phone conversation. "It piques my curiosity. Why have they worked so hard to be secretive all of these years?"

If Democrats were Republicans, ALEC would be ACORN by now. But Democrats are barely Democrats, so people like Dayton, and the UW professors, are out there on their own.